Midlife Migranthttp://midlifemigrant.com
Forty something, new country, new rules.Sat, 10 Feb 2018 17:25:26 +0000en-GBhourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.4Manners are a minefieldhttp://midlifemigrant.com/2018/02/10/manners-are-a-minefield/
http://midlifemigrant.com/2018/02/10/manners-are-a-minefield/#respondSat, 10 Feb 2018 17:25:26 +0000http://midlifemigrant.com/?p=1780Continue reading]]>My kids had been to visit a friend’s house recently and had eaten middags or their evening meal there. All went well but the Mamma pulled me aside afterwards and said that she had to correct my son at the table. Right, I said nervously, hoping that he hadn’t had a fit of regression to babyhood and started flinging food or stuffing it in his pockets. None of the above apparently; eating politely was not the problem but he had left the table when he had finished his food, without asking and before her kids were finished eating. So she called him back and explained that he needed to sit and wait, he didn’t have permission to leave the table until the others were finished.

Once I got over the initial jolt, probably coming from the frank way in which she told me, I was very grateful to her, firstly for telling him the right thing to do and making him do it and secondly, for telling me about it so I could make sure he does it too. You see our house isn’t a haven of Norwegian manners because we are not Norwegian. We are a bit relaxed in the meal department. There are some basics; without exception, everyone has to say Takk for maten or thanks for the food as they leave the table. And I’ll be heard bellowing, “ARE YOU FORGETTING SOMETHING::??” if anyone dares leave the table without saying this. I love this Norwegian custom (the manners, I mean, the bellowing is all mine).

We frequently have kids visiting for play-dates with our two and I find it fascinating how kids behave, depending on their cultural background. They are all getting the same Norwegian education, so it’s safe to say that the difference in manners comes from what they are learning at home. And it’s easy to see the immigrant kids who don’t mix a lot with Norwegians as they are usually a lot more casual about eating; the requests to sit and eat on the sofa, the inability to sit and eat without hopping up and down from the table, forgetting to say thanks for the meal, grabbing ice creams from my hands for desert without saying thanks, or even a sister clearing away dishes from the table while a brother would walk off to play which gave me a suspicious insight into who does what at home.

From an integration perspective, how do kids of immigrants have local manners if their parents don’t embrace them or in many cases, don’t even know what local manners are. I don’t want our two kids to stand out for all the wrong reasons when they are going to a Norwegian friend’s house so I absorb all I hear and learn with keen interest.

There are of course universal manners of being polite, being mindful, saying thank you. But manners are also connected to language. It’s not common in Norwegian to say please if you are asking for a second serving or to pass the potatoes. In English, you would be rude if you didn’t. Being the practical folk that they are here, it’s also perfectly fine to tuck into your food as soon as it’s on the table and not wait for everyone to be ready to start. My German in-laws have frequently, albeit unknowingly, put me under stress by not even touching cutlery, let alone food, until we are all ready to reach for them together. It’s a minefield.

And then there’s another layer which is our own personal standard on manners. I have an abhorrence of noisy eating ever since I was a kid, thanks to my big brother sitting across the dinner table from me for years, scowling and growling at anyone who slurped, chewed loudly, or scraped cutlery off the plate. He and I both carry that low-to-zero tolerance mantle these days. I really, really don’t need to see the food in anyone’s mouth: under-fives are the only ones getting a special dispensation on this one. I’m also not so keen on using a fork as a shovel but that one feels a bit lonely most of the time.

We had kids visiting for the best part of a day recently and I struggled a bit with the fact that they didn’t say thanks or even goodbye to any of us before going off on their merry way home. It’s probably not a big deal here but this is where my Irish cultural crossover comes in. I warned my two kids that they should always say thanks to the grown-up who has been taking care of them before they leave a play-date; at their age, there’s always a grown up making sure that they don’t burn the house down and that they have food to eat while not doing just that. Just say thanks, that’s all, whatever the language.

We’re going to London for half-term at the end of February and I’ll no doubt be bellowing hisses at different stages as I remind the kids to automatically say please again when we are back in the world of English.

And we have implemented the rule that nobody leaves the table after a meal until everyone is finished or without express permission. Now our boy could spend up to an hour at the table after every meal as his little sister enjoys her food at a nice, easy, languorous pace. She feels it’s good to take her time and not rush digestion. She’s discovering that there are indeed many ways to terrorise a big brother.

]]>http://midlifemigrant.com/2018/02/10/manners-are-a-minefield/feed/0Here it comes there it goeshttp://midlifemigrant.com/2018/02/02/here-it-comes-there-it-goes/
http://midlifemigrant.com/2018/02/02/here-it-comes-there-it-goes/#respondFri, 02 Feb 2018 13:58:44 +0000http://midlifemigrant.com/?p=1767Continue reading]]>I sat on the train yesterday morning, looking out the window and wistfully thinking of those halcyon days of yore when things were, well, how can I say it, things were just a bit more predictable, a bit easier even. The world glimmered reliably in deep, white snow back then. Our garden was filled to the brim, courtesy of all the shoveled snow from our own path, graciously helped along by the neighbours upstairs as they cleared their stairwell in their attempt to come down to earth in one piece. Walking through trees on the way to school turned into stooping through tunnels, as the snow weighed down the branches and you tried not to have too much of it sticking to your woolly hat or in your handbag when you came out the other end. With no real experience of snow before I moved to Norway, I was the one saying Whow! or Isn’t this amazing!, on repeat, for days on end.

So anyway, that was early last week, pulling towards late January I suppose you’d say. We even dug out the cross-country skis that Sunday, went out in front of our house and just took off skiing on the pedestrian roads around the neighbourhood for a few hours. There were few people on the streets so when I did fall over, there was only my own dear family to see it, show momentary concern, figure out I was grand and carry on regardless. I went on skis for the first time in my life last winter. If, as Malcolm Gladwell said, it takes 10,000 hours to become great at something, I’m making good progress with only around 9,996 hours to go now.

But then the great meltdown came a few days later, temperatures went above 0 deg C and much of the world here became a sea of wet slush on a bed rock of hard ice, treacherous to walk on. The world went from dreamy white to wet, icy, grim grey. Everywhere on footpaths were people baby-stepping and aquaplaning in turn, as cars and buses whizzed past as normal on the cleared roads. My favourite part of this weather front was walking beside manholes in the ground when I could hear that the tons of melting snow were becoming raging rivers underground. Impressive audio from the manholes in those days. The Oslo authorities were afraid we would all be floating in no time if the snow mass kept melting but then the freeze came back to rescue us all.

Since then, the snow has come, melted again and returned three or four times, all very jittery really. Due to the sheer volume of snow from early January, the snow piles never totally disappeared. I could still easily dig myself a snow cave in the garden today if I wanted to get away from it all for a while. But at the current rate of flux, I might need flood-proofing for the next thaw that’s around the corner.

With the temperatures constantly fluctuating between minus and plus, we’ve learned that you need to make the most of the weather each day because you just don’t know what’s coming. We found an ice-skating rink not far from us last weekend and off we went with our very keen 6 year old daughter. The setting was beautiful, on the edge of a forest with a big container serving as the hub for skis, sticks, skates and helmets, all free to borrow. I fancied myself on ice so I thought I’d give it a go. The husband took the job of keeping the girls upright or pulling us up off the ice if he didn’t catch us fast enough. I lasted about five minutes and two topples. You see, this hardcore rink didn’t have a rail around it to hold on to, which I realised was a vital piece of equipment whenever I ice-skated before. There was nothing there except fresh cold air, hope and the husband to keep me upright. The required skill just didn’t turn up on the day. Pride got the better of me in no time and I tottered off to give the skates and helmet back to the nice man in the container.

The yo-yoing temperatures continue this week but next week, we are promised good hardy temperatures of around -15 deg C throughout the week. Mad as it sounds, I am looking forward to it so at least any remaining snow on the ground will be just that and not continuously in danger of turning to water and flowing off somewhere. Bad for the nerves, that.

This is a piece I was asked to write for The Irish Times online edition, reflecting an my viewpoint on Trump’s now infamous comments on sh**hole countries and immigrants from Norway. Published in Irish Times on 16.01.2018

News of Trump’s damning comments last week, when he referred to Haiti, El Salvador and nations in Africa as “sh**hole countries”, was met with the same disgust and disbelief here in Norway as elsewhere in the world. Having lived here in Oslo for the last five years, I can safely say that Norwegians have a pragmatic and just view of the world. Racism is generally not in their fabric, hence the disgust. The disbelief was because this was the President of the United States talking in such rancid, profane terms. And then when he added to boot that he would like to see migration to the US from countries like Norway, there was ample mirth piled on top of the disbelief.

Now, it wasn’t lost on anyone here that Trump had just had a successful meeting with the Norwegian Prime Minister, Erna Solberg, one day previously and given this bizarre, call-to-action for Norwegian migrants, Erna clearly had made a good impression. She even commented afterwards that Trump seemed like ‘an ordinary man with a sense of humour’. Apparently, he was really on the charm offensive. Many here have commented that Trump’s positive endorsement and invite of sorts may well have stemmed from the fact that she was also representing a mainly white, wealthy, western nation that buys US military equipment, runs a healthy trade deficit with the US, not to mention investing a large chunk of its trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund in the US economy. He’s a business man and let’s face it, business is good.

Trump’s comments about “sh**hole countries” were met with widespread ridicule here, in no small part because any suggestion that immigrants from some countries have more value than others, would not sit well with Norwegian values. Immigration into Norway has sharply reduced since a spike in 2015 and this drop is largely driven by the populist Progress Party currently in coalition with Solberg’s Conservatives. Norwegians are most worried about levels of migrants, not where they come from. The biggest concern here is that migration is at a level where immigrants can be properly integrated, embrace Norwegian values and, of course, contribute to the economy.

Neither did Trump’s assertion that Norwegians would be desirable immigrants land as a huge complement here with these no-nonsense Norwegians. While many Norwegians spend a year or two studying in the US as part of their higher education, there is no great desire to relocate there permanently. Why would they when they have one of the wealthiest nations in the world per capita, the world’s happiest people according to the UN’s World Happiness Report last year, not to mention affordable education, a great welfare system and huts in the mountains? While there may be a certain smugness that their little country is suddenly a world headline, you won’t hear any Norwegians bragging about it as this would go against their social codes of humility, respect and generally never, ever positioning themselves as better than anyone else.

From my own perspective, as a migrant in Norway and previously in the US, I think it’s fair to say that many Norwegians would really struggle with some aspects of American life if they were to take the plunge and relocate. I was fortunate enough to live in San Francisco and later Boston when working for Irish and British tech companies many years ago. I loved it there, the openness and friendliness that I as a talkative Irish person could really connect with, as well as the sense of possibility and optimism that came with hard work and a can-do attitude. But there’s no getting away from the fact that the US has a much wider gap between rich and poor than Norway, not to mention two weeks annual leave vrs five here and as I remember it, a norm of working late a lot more often than going home on time – with no paid overtime. So Donald Trump may want immigrants from Norway but they may not stick around for very long even if they did take the leap.

Coming back to Trump’s castigating ‘sh**hole’ remarks, this has predictably generated a raft of comments from the satirical press here in Norway. This ranges from proposals to rename Norway to the “Kingdom of Sh**hole” in solidarity with those maligned countries, to deriding US policies on gun violence and healthcare. Neither is the irony lost that, the Prime Minister of Norway, with English as a second language, seemed more articulate and able to express herself in English than the US President. While Norwegians are nice people, both respectful and humble, I’m happy to say they are not above a good-natured jab where it may be warranted.

]]>http://midlifemigrant.com/2018/01/17/norwegians-have-good-reason-to-reject-trumps-call/feed/0The art of passive hearinghttp://midlifemigrant.com/2018/01/16/the-art-of-passive-hearing/
http://midlifemigrant.com/2018/01/16/the-art-of-passive-hearing/#respondTue, 16 Jan 2018 11:26:22 +0000http://midlifemigrant.com/?p=1721Continue reading]]>I noticed it sitting in Oslo airport recently, waiting for a flight to Ireland. Christmas and New Year celebrations had come and gone and I had a morning flight to Dublin to go see family in the West of Ireland. I was travelling alone this time as my mother needed some help and care. She has dementia and so sometimes it’s just easier to be really useful and spend quality time with her when I go on my own.

So there I sat in a café in Oslo airport, with 90 minutes to spare before departure and in need of a coffee as a reward for manoeuvring the two trains and 5 escalators it had taken me to get there. I got my coffee and sat down at an empty table, with most of the other tables occupied by solo, phone-absorbed travellers. Peace and quiet to get my thoughts together.

And then, the low-level drone started. It was a deep and mellow noise, not unpleasant but more than a little relentless. I quickly figured out that it was an Irish voice, female and respectfully low, murmuring into a hands-free headset. She was speaking English which is why I could so easily tune into her conversation for the next 23.5 minutes, not that I was keeping track. English is my primary and most fluent language and the one that immerses my brain most of the time. So try as I might, I couldn’t tune out. Even though there were people sitting between us and even a couple speaking Norwegian at one stage, her dialogue was like a direct transmission to me. All other noise was just white and fuzzy. She was planning a Spring trip with god knows who on the other end, right down to flight options and dates. There was much to discuss as they figured out which dates would suit both of them and where they would go. Her voice seemed to amplify over time, equal and opposite to my levels of irritation at being able to hear this conversation. All I could do was hope to goodness that her friend on the other end would find an unmissable flight deal or have a toilet emergency, anything to wrap it up quickly.

It struck me then that this was a by-product of being back in the world of English. I think that it’s fair to say that near proximity to a departure gate for a flight to Dublin anywhere in the world could reasonably be said to be a little bit of Ireland. Standing in the queue for boarding, the Irish accents were many and melodic. It also struck me that the reason I was so bothered by the intrusive noise was that I was out of practice with overhearing conversations passively, you know when words just waft to your ears and form a story without you making any effort whatsoever. I’m not at the stage of this type of passive hearing in the Norwegian language, maybe never will be, which means that it’s a peaceful world in my head here in Norway.

I suppose you could say then that eavesdropping has smaller potential in Norwegian than in my native English. It takes a conscious decision and concerted effort to listen to a conversation if I want to pick up any information that I’m not meant to have, let’s say sitting on a bus or a train. The two teenagers sitting behind me talking about what they did for the weekend would never have to worry about me listening, because really, no, I mean seriously, I’m not. Working in a school last week and watching some Norwegian short films from the back of a classroom, it came to me that I really needed to focus in if I wanted to hear and understand dialogues. If I glanced at my phone for example, or if others distracted me by merely muttering to each other, I would likely lose that piece of the film. For me, my brain needs full focus to ingest, interpret and understand in a second language.

On raising the subject with him, the German husband who has spent twenty years out of Germany, all the while speaking English, admitted that he still has much better eavesdropping skills in German than in English. If there are Germans sitting on the other side of the office, he can’t help but tune into what they are saying, like it or not. His British colleagues can safely talk away at the same distance and he can block it out. He also said it’s virtually impossible to write say, an email in English when listening to people speaking German as it all becomes a muddle. So, if I ever want him NOT to hear me saying something (although this would indeed be a problem in reverse), I just need to turn on a German radio station. Good to know.

Then there’s the other side of it with the kids where they talk brashly and confidently in English when we are out and about here because they hear Norwegian all around them and think there is nobody listening to them, or more likely, and wrongly, that nobody can understand them. We may be on the street passing someone by and my daughter will make a nice loud comment like “He’s really bald”. Or her best one yet was in the swimming pool changing area, when she felt the need to say “That lady’s underwear is far too small for her” . I thought I would choke but them skilfully pretended I heard nothing as I hurried her along. Hopefully passive hearing was deactivated that day for said lady also, or we’ll never know how that awful truth might have impacted confidence or underwear habits.

I had a great few days at home in Ireland although as ever, it’s brutally hard to leave when Mom is wondering why I have to go and why I can’t stay there with her. I’ll be back again soon, for sure.

And as for my flight, I was grateful that I wasn’t sitting anywhere near super-organised talking lady on the plane although it would have given me a chance to ask her a few things, like if this would be her first time going to Madrid in March, and did she not think that Friday to Monday would be a bit short though …?

]]>http://midlifemigrant.com/2018/01/16/the-art-of-passive-hearing/feed/0Norway’s feeling for snowhttp://midlifemigrant.com/2017/12/24/norways-feeling-for-snow/
http://midlifemigrant.com/2017/12/24/norways-feeling-for-snow/#respondSun, 24 Dec 2017 09:56:25 +0000http://midlifemigrant.com/?p=1699Continue reading]]>It’s that wondrous Christmas time of year and it’s been consistently cold here, with around 5 inches of snow on the ground for over 3 weeks now. It’s that lovely compressed snow, with enough of it on the ground to make the world look white and bright. Sufficiency is everything when it comes to snow and while we had some false starts in November, the determined, enduring snow has been here for a while now. We’re enjoying it. We’ve even lost the nervous twitch, no longer pulling back the curtain expecting all of it to be gone each morning. Although temperature is hovering at 0 deg C today and things are looking a bit slushy, we’re hoping that it will be a white Christmas here in our little corner of the world outside Oslo.

A feature of life here in Norway is that it carries on as normal when there is snow and ice on the ground. Schools and kindergartens are open for business, trains and buses run on time. The passengers may be a bit bulkier due to their layers of wool and bulky coats and floors are wet everywhere due to melted snow carried in on big winter boots, but that’s about it.

People here are still talking about that day a few years ago when they were late to work because the buses in Oslo were caught short and had taken the winter tyres off too early. It’s required here to change to winter tyres, usually by the end of October which means that cars have the grip they need to tackle snow and ice safely. If the police catch you with summer tyres in November snow, you’ll get a nice fine and worse, if you have a car accident, your insurer won’t be too backwards in rejecting a claim. And on this particular day in late spring, there was unexpected snow. Buses were out of action for a whole day, although all other transport like trains, t-bans, taxis, and most cars were up and running. I remember thinking, as I listened to grumbles from Norwegians about inconvenience and inefficiency, that they would get a fair old shock at a) how the delays would extend to days in other countries as ALL modes of transport would be out and b) how happy people might be because of such problems as it would like a divine green light to just go home and get under the duvet, sorry, I mean, ammm…. work from home.

You see Norway is literally built to thrive in snow. At the end of our road is a steep pedestrian hill to go down to the train station, basically a very wide footpath. Now, this would be fairly treacherous in snow and ice due to the sheer incline. Slip sliding away would be your only option. Or maybe lying down and rolling. But not here. When this hill was dug out of the mountainous rock years ago and turned into a path, there was heating laid under one side of the tarmac, so there is always a strip of the path totally ice free. It’s the same on the humped pedestrian bridge near the shopping centre, and many different paths in the city centre. I had never seen the likes of it until moving here. It’s impressive.

And at the end of each street is a small fat wheelie bin without wheels (just close your eyes, you’ve got this) filled with grit. When there is heavy snowfall, there’s what seems likes a phantom driver with his John Deere tractor and snow plough that roars onto the streets, always under cover of darkness. He’s phantom to me as I’ve never seen him in daylight, I’m not even sure he’s real. I tried to take a photo of him once and it came out all blurred and spectral, I stopped messing with the dark arts after that. Whoever he is, he does a great job pushing snow aside so that it’s possible to easily walk on street and drive on all the neighbouring streets. Regardless of snowfall, everyone has to get up and go to work and school in the morning. Phantom’s friend, The Gritter, also appears out of nowhere when necessary to spread grit to give grip. These guys are contracted by the local kommune or county council and are really on it.

And then there are the airports. Planes don’t stop flying when temperatures sink and snow falls, although they may be delayed as they go to the de-icing station before lift-off. On a cold, snowy day as you are sitting on a plane ready for take-off, you can see what looks like an army of ants mobilising in their little tractors and snow ploughs, clearing the runway in steady, co-ordinated, efficient movements. Planes taxi to a de-icing station where there is another little army ready to spray de-icer and then off they go up into the skies.

Earlier this month, there was a good covering of snow in the UK and Ireland which brought chaos to airports, the road networks and the ever welcome – for kids anyway – school closures. As usual, there was a flurry of moaning commentary on social media about the need to grind to a halt at ‘the first sign of snow’. “Why can’t we be more prepared?” they asked. “Why does the state infrastructure go into shock every time” people pondered.

I think it’s fair to say that the only reason there is chaos is that it’s not deemed worthwhile to make the capital investment for the few days a year when it’s needed. Apparently some 50,000 passengers were stranded in Heathrow in one freezing snowy day earlier this month, not because they couldn’t de-ice the planes but because the schedule is so tight normally that the extra de-icing step meant they fell behind in no time, resulting in cancellations. The husband flew out to New York from snowy Oslo and arrived on schedule. His colleague flew from Heathrow and arrived a day late. It comes down to commercial considerations and as you never know when snow will come, it’s not worth changing scheduling for the one or two days a year as it would reduce the number of flights and therewith, revenue.

And as for the roads, I don’t think there are the same army of phantom drivers and gritters ready to mobilise as there are here. With no requirement to have winter tyres in most of the UK and Ireland, driving is more uncertain, slower and more accident-ridden. It all adds up.

Snow days are lovely, both those with low, grey skies ready to burst open with snow or those with the wide open blue skies where the blaring sun is reflecting off the snow and you curse yourself for not thinking of sunglasses. They certainly make the short days between October and January a little exciting and varied.

But for now it’s Christmas Eve and the excitement is up, this evening is when Christmas is celebrated here and Julenissen, who looks suspiciously like Santa Claus,comes to deliver the presents. In this house, we are hoping he’ll be his usual burglar self and come in the middle of the night so we can all get up at 5am and scream in wonder and excitement. Because Christmas Eve falls on a Sunday, all shops are closed here today so the calm has already begun. Tomorrow we’ll have our roasted pork ribs for Christmas dinner and go out sledging, or at the very least, think about it.

Wishing you all a lovely Christmas and I hope you get to spend it in the warmth of family or friends or both. See you again soon.

]]>http://midlifemigrant.com/2017/12/24/norways-feeling-for-snow/feed/0I wish my parents were Norwegianhttp://midlifemigrant.com/2017/12/10/i-wish-my-parents-were-norwegian/
http://midlifemigrant.com/2017/12/10/i-wish-my-parents-were-norwegian/#respondSun, 10 Dec 2017 04:19:12 +0000http://midlifemigrant.com/?p=1668Continue reading]]>I knew it was going to come at some point. We have 2 kids, born elsewhere but with fluent Norwegian, with 2 immigrant parents who operate daily in a language that’s not native or totally fluent to them.

And we have an 8 year old who doesn’t like to do things in half-measures. He holds himself to a very high standard when doing any sort of group activity, from doing the plank in karate (3 mins is just ok, seriously..?!) to insisting on no mistakes in homework. I have very fuzzy memories of that childhood period of my life but for some reason, I always pictured homework to be the parent pushing the reluctant, docile child – ‘Come on, make an effort, you can do better than this’. It would be a chance to give all of that lovely, facile encouragement to kids doing their best to ignore you.

In this house, it’s frequently the parent trying to de-escalate the situation saying that ‘It’s fine, it’s good enough, it doesn’t have to be perfect’. It’s not every day, nor even every week. but it happens sometimes that there is stress because our boy is not a hundred percent sure about his answer or approach. And in this situation, it’s fair to say that the natural order is for kids to look to grown-ups for homework support, expanded vocabulary, grammar correction, pronunciations, maths techniques and so on. We’ve been around a bit longer and are just supposed to ‘know stuff’. But what if the parents literally don’t speak the same language? What happens then?

We are the same as many other immigrant families around the world where kids are operating in a different language in school by day than they are at home by night. Our Norwegian is decent but it’s not as natural or as precise as the kids’. So at homework time, particularly in maths, we swing between 2 languages as we, the parents, explain technique and logic in English and he teaches us the Norwegian words for ⅛ + ⅔. This is no one-way street, it’s a motorway with all lanes hopping in all directions.

It’s not something we ever considered as a side effect when changing country and language. We somehow didn’t ponder on whether we’d be alright with the homework in the same breath as whether we’d freeze with the cold. The kids aren’t disadvantaged by our lack of forethought on the homework front, we just have to take the time and effort to sit with them and work it out together. And there is, of course, so much they’ve gained from our move that stretches far beyond this. It does, however, make their learning process different and sometimes a bit more challenging than that of Norwegian classmates. We, as parents, also have to work harder in being able to support them. I’ve a fairly big repository of Norwegian language books and grammar notes at this point and they are often on call. I’ve even resorted to texting a Norwegian friend at times to get a view on norsk words in sentences.

I’ve heard many immigrant friends with Norwegian partners say that their kids turn almost exclusively to the Norwegian parent for homework support. I totally understand this now. The child wants to have total confidence in the homework advisor – you know how it is, it takes them 5 seconds to figure out which parent is better at maths or science or language or generally staying calm, once they start getting homework at school. When it’s ALL in Norwegian and neither parent is totally fluent, it’s a case of who has a better ‘feel’ for the language, who is more resourceful and better at persevering with a dictionary or the google.

There is much debate here about integration, the need for it and what the immigrant population and the state is doing right or wrong to make it happen. Sometimes it’s intimated that immigrant parents are not so engaged in their kid’s education as Norwegians. I now understand why this might be the case and it’s not necessarily because they just don’t care or are less committed about their kid’s education. Maybe it’s because they haven’t made the leap yet from Urdu or Farsi or Arabic or English to a great level of Norwegian, which means they are not in a strong position to help with homework, to participate in parent committees and so on. It’s much easier to confidently participate when you have the ability and skills to do so. In our high immigrant school, there are Norwegian classes laid on in the daytime for parents, free of charge and paid for by the local kommune or council. This is an impressive, sensible, benevolent measure – immigrants who can speak the language will find it easier to find work. They will also be better able to support their kids, not just financially but in doing homework and participating in school activities, all of this improving kid’s engagement and success in school and their chances of going on to college and getting decent jobs. It’s playing the logical long game.

Last Sunday evening was the first time my son got so frustrated that he said, ‘I wish my parents were Norwegian’. He was diligently doing extra maths homework and it was a Sunday, which probably didn’t help. He needed to answer a question about whether Emil or Tuva got more pieces of chocolate. It was Emil of course, that bit was easy, but what to write down in Norwegian didn’t ‘feel right’ to him, even though my feelings and I were totally fine with it. I acknowledged his frustration, reminding him also of the many advantages he has, not least how glad he is, most of the time anyway, that he speaks fluent English. He mumbled that this just leads to boredom in English class but I chose to overlook that one; it was clear that it wasn’t just that his glass was half-empty in that moment, someone had clearly run off with it.

So we have an interesting journey ahead of us. The requirement is of course going to climb as the kids grow up in the school system here. What about when they start writing essays, learning physics, chemistry, history. I can’t wait for the discussions on Newton’s laws of motion or the composition of molecules. In Norwegian. But then, we will figure it out when it comes to that, we always do.

The kids are a huge part of the reason we moved here, to give us a better quality of family life and greater freedom for them. There were a lot of things we weren’t in a position to foresee, and the unique dynamic in multi-lingual Norwegian homework is one of them. It’s interesting and challenging and keeps us on our toes.

I just can’t help but wonder sometimes at what point I’ll walk with unfaltering, foot-to-the-floor steps again.

]]>http://midlifemigrant.com/2017/12/10/i-wish-my-parents-were-norwegian/feed/0Staying above waterhttp://midlifemigrant.com/2017/11/23/staying-above-water/
http://midlifemigrant.com/2017/11/23/staying-above-water/#commentsThu, 23 Nov 2017 11:20:06 +0000http://midlifemigrant.com/?p=1640Continue reading]]>For various common sense reasons and because they love the water, we’ve undertaken to teach the kids how to swim. The husband is a good swimmer, he learned how to swim in school way back in East Germany where it was mandatory on the school curriculum. The communists didn’t do much by halves and he learned well. He is now teaching our son to swim and even after many reasonably early Sunday morning starts to head off to the pool, they are both still enjoying these sessions and Alexander is steadily gaining confidence and technique.

My daughter and I started going to a weekly swimming course in early September. We go to a nice, if small, swimming pool in a local rehabilitation centre, only suitable for little people or those in need of not much more than ‘on-the-spot’ water therapy. It’s just 30 minutes in the water per week with 8 kids under the age of 8, so it’s never dull. Or quiet.

Swimming here in Norway is seen as a necessary survival skill, what with all of those lakes and fjords to jump or fall into. And ever with the insightful view, the husband reckons that swimming is much more important here these days than running, now that the wild wolf population has depleted significantly.

It’s possible that I have a bit of a hang-up about swimming as I didn’t learn to swim properly until I was an adult. I really believe that people should be able to swim properly as it’s within almost everyone’s capability and it opens up a whole world of joy in the water. I’ve also read Robinson Crusoe and you never know when a ship might sink and you have to swim your way to a desert island.

My mother used to love recalling a particular story from when I was a child, about the day she came to see me swimming in the local swimming pool in Tuam in the west of Ireland. Swimming was a firm favourite activity in the long summer days, cycling the 3 miles to the local swimming pool with my brother and sister and later with my friends. This particular day was the first time my mother saw me in the water. I was keen to show off my technique, which included a swim ring and moving across the water splashing and kicking with every ounce of energy I had. My mother sat up in the viewing area and looked down at her youngest child with pride and a whole lot of laughter as it turns out. She told me years later that it was the best doggy paddle she’d ever seen and that was notwithstanding the many dogs she had seen swimming.

You see, it was great fun back then messing about in the water for a few hours but with no instruction at all, I never learned to swim properly as a child. We weren’t taught in school and while I could manage to do a length or two, I was never that comfortable or confident in the water. If out of my depth, I’d be the one just a few degrees away from panic.

Nora’s swimming coach is a young Norwegian guy in his twenties and he’s absolutely great with the kids. Parents are a vital part of the lessons, both to help the kids with the various exercises and, of course, to keep them alive. My only challenge is that the instructor speaks in rapid Norwegian in a noisy, kid-squealing, splashing environment and so I find it hard to understand what he is saying sometimes. There have been times when Nora was doing anything but synchronised swimming with the others because, well, we just didn’t know any better. I am not as good yet at making sense of a partial sentence or random words in Norwegian as I am in English, especially if there is loads of background noise. When booking the course, they did check language requirements for the child, i.e. does the child understand Norwegian, which I remember thinking was wise and considerate. But with excited hyper kids of that age, it’s the accompanying grown-up who needs to keep with the plot as very often, they are the only ones listening. When I explained the challenge to Nora, she was very helpful in fairness and offered to save the situation going forward… all I needed to do was tell her what the coach said in Norwegian and she would translate into English for me. Hmmm, if only I knew, darling, if only I knew.

For the last month or so when I’ve been ill, the husband has taken over the swimming lessons. He’s loving it as I did, as Nora is brave and ecstatic in the water. He doesn’t seem to have the same comprehension problems as me (or if he does, he’s not admitting to it). The only problem is that out of the 8 kids, 6 are normally accompanied by their Dads and with only 2 showers in the men’s area, there is no quick shower and getaway afterwards, more like a chilly, towel-wrapped queue for all but the speedy. Asking what took them so long as they come in the door after swimming, is a line of questioning that doesn’t generally go down well…

Swimming is also taught in primary school here when kids are approx, 10 years old. This is with mixed success according to what’s in the media but based on general Norwegian no nonsense efficiency, I’m choosing to be a believer. From 2017/2018 school year, Utdanningsdirektoratet or the Department of Education has introduced a ‘proficiency test’ which kids are expected to pass at the end of 4th grade, which is again at approx. 10 years old. The idea is that they learn swimming at school and then pass this test to prove it, including jumping or diving into deep water, treading water and swimming 100 metres. It’s very impressive and I can say with some confidence that no doggy paddler will manage this.

As for me, pride as well as a desire to do some voluntary work in Africa where swimming ability was a must, meant that I just had to lose the swim ring in adult years. So I found myself an instructor in London some years ago, a fine Australian life-saving lad, who taught me proper swimming techniques. I still remember how good it felt to leave the doggies behind with certainty and confidently join the humans in the water.

]]>http://midlifemigrant.com/2017/11/23/staying-above-water/feed/2Road to recoveryhttp://midlifemigrant.com/2017/11/06/road-to-recovery/
http://midlifemigrant.com/2017/11/06/road-to-recovery/#commentsMon, 06 Nov 2017 17:56:48 +0000http://midlifemigrant.com/?p=1627Continue reading]]>It’s been over three weeks since I felt unwell and had some days in hospital, the unwellness manifested in slurred speech and paralysed non-cooperation of the right side of my face. Life suddenly turned into a permanent wink as one eye wouldn’t close properly. Suspected Lyme disease they said, with a side order of facial paralysis. They sent me home from the hospital with antibiotics and steroids and a positive sense that all would be just fine. In time.

The funny thing is that as I read up about Lyme disease in the gaps between copious amounts of prescribed TV watching, I began to think I had in fact been fortunate because the facial freeze had lead to early diagnosis of the Lyme disease. I’ve been treated now and feel physically fine again. The face will take time but it’s already getting better beyond what I dared hope for when they said it would probably take 3 to 6 months. I can speak as clearly as I ever did, most of the time anyway, and can even give a decent wry smile.

The whole recovery process has been life affirming – wrapped with love by my nearest and dearest, the messages and calls and flowers from friends and the many offers of help from friends and neighbours. My wonderful niece, Niamh put her life on hold for a week so she could come over from Ireland and help out. Niamh and I always laugh a lot together about the daftest of things, it helped the spirit no end.

I had just two days where I felt down and frustrated. With a debilitating ear ache and the facial palsy showing absolutely no improvement after 10 days, I felt overwhelmingly down. My doctor, a very empathetic Conor McGregor fan from Serbia, told me that frustration and tears were healthy and normal, preferable to pill-popping in self-medication which he reckoned was the only other likely alternative. So I felt better as I sobbed my goodbye and moved on.

In hindsight, I probably wasn’t mentally well enough to deliver my daughter to that birthday party in the kids indoor play jungle that is Leos Lekeland. It was a rainy Sunday and it felt like half the under tens of Oslo were there, along with their parents. You need 2 hours of meditation before going near that place on a good day and this definitely wasn’t one of those. The stunned look on the face of a Mom as she looked at me and then sympathetically asked was I alright, was enough to set me off. The stress tears started to trickle as I swiftly tried to extract myself from the party room. My niece looked on in horror…. oh no, Aunty is having a meltdown. My poor daughter cried in sympathy, threw up her lunch in a nice big bin right next to us and declared she just wanted to go home and chill out. My son looked on in amazement at how quickly we managed to move from normality to chaos. We excused ourselves and left skid marks in our race to get home that day and I decided, in the interest of not making a holy show of myself every time I went outside the door, that I shouldn’t push things.

But within a few days, I had turned a corner and the ready tears were gone. The husband went away on an already postponed business trip, niece Niamh went back to Ireland and the time had came for me to brave the school run. To avert any risk of similar teary chaos, I sent an email to the manager at activity school, telling her what had happened to me and asking that staff didn’t refer to my obvious facial/speech problems if at all possible so that it was as normal as possible for the kids. They were all amazing, greeting us as normal and looking at the wall, the ceiling, their shoes, anywhere but my face. It was almost funny at times but I was very grateful for their considerate avoidance tactics.

It’s good to feel stronger and on the road to recovery; it doesn’t matter anymore when I reach the end of it as long as I’m on the road. And the husband, in all of his wisdom, pointed out that it’s surely a good thing to have a very clear good side now when posing for photographs, all that deliberating and pondering on which side is better is definitely gone. A genius he is when it comes to putting a positive spin on things.

]]>http://midlifemigrant.com/2017/11/06/road-to-recovery/feed/10Impulsive hospital visithttp://midlifemigrant.com/2017/10/18/impulsive-hospital-visit/
http://midlifemigrant.com/2017/10/18/impulsive-hospital-visit/#commentsWed, 18 Oct 2017 14:27:31 +0000http://midlifemigrant.com/?p=1618Continue reading]]>Last Wednesday was set to be an ordinary day really, except for the strange metallic taste in my mouth from when I woke up. I had my coffee, some breakfast and it was still there. It even trumped the super-strength toothpaste I used to brush my teeth. Last time I eat a salad late in the evening, I thought. Euugh, could it be that spring onion….

The day just slid from there, the metallic taste, to the sore eye, to the tingly feeling on the right side of my face, to the extreme discomfort talking to parents at my son’s handball practice later. My mouth felt like it couldn’t manage a smile any more, especially on one side. In the mirror, my face was that nice grey white that you have after you do a white wash with a navy blue t-shirt imposter. By the time my husband came home, I thought I was having a stroke. He had worked in a neurological rehab centre in Switzerland many years ago and went into some mad never-before-seen overdrive mode, firing questions and asking me to smile, frown, blink. I couldn’t credibly do any of them.

After finding care for the kids, the two of us made it to the legevakt or Accident & Emergency in Oslo city center within an hour. They assessed the situation and then sent us across town to the hospital where I stayed for a few days. Turns out, it all comes back to an infected tick that bit me weeks ago on the arm and left a gift of a rotten infection that will take some months to clear.

It was my first real encounter with the Norwegian healthcare system and it was very impressive. From the moment I registered at legevakt with what seemed to be a rapidly deteriorating condition, I was moved through the care system with efficiency and decisiveness. I arrived in a neurology ward at 3 in the morning and they were very apologetic that the inn was full so I’d have to sleep outside on the corridor for the night as they had had a busy day. They could have parked me on the moon at that stage and I wouldn’t have minded as long as they were going to get to the bottom of what was wrong with me.

It was a rough few days after that. The life-lines, aka wrinkles, on my forehead disappeared but only on one side as my face was frozen, I will never complain about wrinkles again. I had an MRI scan for the first time in my life. The valium or whatever sort of ‘calmer’ that helped me have an MRI was amazing, I was as chilled as could be. The MRI noises even sounded like a percussion band, good beat and rhythm as it squealed into different positions, only becoming terrifying when the quiet set in.

Then there was the first visit from my kids, both understandably traumatised by my sudden disappearance and then looking horrified when they saw my hospital gown, eye-patch and lop-sided face. One screamed in fear and ran away, the other immediately grabbed my hand and tried to smile in a sideways grin so her face could look as wonky as mine. And then there was the lovely Norwegian doctor who had trained in Dublin, which meant that we could comfortably switch from Norwegian to English for a while and even have some banter about Irish humour, chattiness, and our general abhorrence of silence. That was light relief that I badly needed.

And as for that great Microsoft laptop I have that uses facial recognition software to sign-me in… well, it turns out that’s like a blow falling on a bruise when you have a type of Bell’s Palsy and it sort of rubs it in every time saying, who are you, we don’t know you, go find Carmel, it’s her laptop. I can of course turn this off but I won’t. In time, my face will recover so this will be my own test on literally finding my straight face. When the computer says yes, I’ll know normality is restored. A bit weird perhaps, I know, but one must have aspirations they say.

Right now, I’m home in the loving care of family and strong medication. I’m taking each day as it comes and warned by chatty doctor not to expect miracles. He also advised that Netflix would be good for my health right now and I’m taking that seriously.

And as for that spring onion and whatever part it didn’t play in the early stages, the association was enough and I’m afraid it’s dead to me now.

]]>http://midlifemigrant.com/2017/10/18/impulsive-hospital-visit/feed/2A break from routine is always goodhttp://midlifemigrant.com/2017/10/05/a-break-from-routine-is-always-good/
http://midlifemigrant.com/2017/10/05/a-break-from-routine-is-always-good/#commentsThu, 05 Oct 2017 18:17:47 +0000http://midlifemigrant.com/?p=1607Continue reading]]>It’s autumn break or høstferie here in Oslo this week, which means that all schools are on a break. Kids can relax after all that learning over the last six weeks, before the ramp up to Christmas. Teachers can relax and recharge before that same ramp up. This is when many kids go off to their grandparents for a week or the whole family heads south to the sun for one last blast of Vitamin D before the winter. Or many parents just take time off work and relax with kids at home.

It’s business as usual in our house, and the kids are still getting up and out in the mornings, except instead of real school, they head off to activity school or AKS as we call it, it’s on the school premises and is a service provided in all state schools here in Norway.

How to describe AKS, it’s this amazing place that grabs the kids with a smile and a hug from 7.30am in the morning and keeps them warm, fed, happy and stimulated until parents pick them up, at the very latest 5pm. On regular school days, kids are delivered by the AKS staff to their classrooms at 8.30am and picked up again at 1.45pm when school is over. AKS is one of those places where the kids speed away from you in the morning after a quick hug and then are all grumpy if you arrive too early to pick them up – I mean, didn’t I know that they were in the middle of something interesting!?

Every week, we get an emailed plan showing what the kids will be up to the following week, it ranges from workouts at the gym to hanging out with the animals at the local farm, trips to the forest, indoor and outdoor free play days and the odd movie here and there.

AKS is heavily state funded and requires what I would call, a very reasonable supplementary fee, to be paid by the parents. It’s an amazing service, available for all kids from 1st to 4th class, so up to the age of 10 roughly. This allows parents of young kids to work normal days, so as well as helping kids and parents, there are huge economic benefits to the state as well.

The AKS team excel on a week like this when there is no school at all. They never fail to come up with a great line up of activities, fastidiously planned and executed. Nora, our little school starter is experiencing it all for the first time this week and loving it. One day at the cinema (sweets were even allowed!). One day at Oslo’s biggest park, Frogner Park, taking in a McDonalds as well. One day running around in the forest, eating sausages from a barbecue. And one day focused on maths, where there were lots of number games, board games, cards and the like.

And the pièce de résistance comes tonight for big brother, when he gets to stay overnight at AKS with his mates from school. They’ll ‘sleep’ in the AKS classrooms on the floor in their sleeping bags, looked after by many staff who will work in shifts throughout the night, with some always awake as the kids sleep.

Depending on their home situation, some of these 8-year olds are more independent than others. Some have rarely, if ever, been away from their parents overnight but it’s a good way to cultivate some independence, safe and at ease with their AKS school mates and the AKS staff they know and love. Also, for those kids who aren’t lucky enough to go on holidays or to have grandparents to stay with, it gives them a real highlight in this school break. We are among those parents who are incredibly grateful for this.

Excitement was at fever pitch here earlier today. I delivered our boy into a warm chaos at 6pm this evening, as all parents were delivering kids, mats, sleeping bags and overnight stuff and then heading off home for a quieter evening than usual. The pyjama party is surely in full swing now with popcorn, sweets, a movie, the works.

I was told this morning that ‘It will just be a regular night, Mom. We all have to be in bed by 9pm’. Bed is one thing, son, but I’d wager that sleep will still be a long way off at 9pm this evening…

Either way, at least it won’t be Mom or Dad haranguing him off to sleep for once, that in itself is hugely exciting.